


Damsel in Distress

by Clea Strange (agentj)



Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 20:45:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12825711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentj/pseuds/Clea%20Strange
Summary: From deep inside the Sanctum Sanctorum, Stephen Strange receives a distress call that takes him back into the lair of his enemy. Will the enemy of his enemy be his friend...or something more?





	Damsel in Distress

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been working out how Clea could be introduced into the MCU. This is part of a larger project, but this could be an easy standalone as a day in the mystical realms for Stephen Strange, too.
> 
> Consider this a teaser.

_Our worlds collide_  
_And form strength tonight_

* * *

“Stranger… Help me!”

The call of his-name-but-not-his-name somehow traversed the void and reverberated through his psyche. He didn’t know who it was or how the person could penetrate his personal aura so distinctly, but he felt a familiarity with it along with a deep urgency.

His astral form rocketed through the dimensional barriers to find himself somewhere in the Dark Dimension. This would be hazardous, he thought, for if his presence was felt by Dormammu, he would be toast.

Then another thought occurred - could this be a trap? Could Dormammu be torturing a poor soul only to capture Strange once more in his Dark Dimension, slay him, and thus render their bargain null and void? Certainly a possibility. Although his body was safe and sound in the Sanctum, Stephen knew that if the link were severed between his astral body and his physical form, it would be over, and no one would be the wiser for his demise. There would be no way to warn Wong or the other mystics of his fate or the dangers that were to befall them.

Cautiously, Stephen probed the area from whence he had been called and discovered another pocket dimension within the Dark Dimension. _A mirror of the Dark Dimension_? Stephen wondered as his astral form touched upon it.

As soon as his astral hand touched the boundaries between, he felt his energy sucked in as if a void existed inside of it.

There was no going back now.

Strange felt like his whole being was stretched into a long rubber band and turned inside out as it pierced the pocket dimension, then snapped back into being as he coalesced on the other side. Everything was in reverse like a photographer’s negative. The sky was a stark white, while the planetoids and asteroids surrounding him were just as pale, but dotted with dark plumes of color. Looking at his own form, even he was glowing in a bright orangey-yellow tunic and leggings, his gloves a deep blue. No doubt the skin of his hands would appear a sickly grey with bright white veins of scars where his astral form not projecting his ensemble along with his psychic energy.

“Stranger…!” the voice called again, much closer and clearer than before. “Please…help!”

Stephen marveled at the power the wielder of that voice would have to emit in order to project their words so far into his mind through so many different dimensional realities. Surely even Dormammu could have no such power. But now was not the time to speculate - not only did he have to find the source of this voice and whether or not he should proceed, but how to escape this alternative reality.

He knew the Mirror Dimension of Earth’s reality could encompass the whole breadth of its universe. So too did it appear this alternative place inside the Dark Dimension was much the same. With everything in reversed colors, Stephen found himself disoriented and difficult to get his bearing.

Focusing on the voice once more, he found himself before a tangling sphere of energy, its fiery tentacles in deep purples and violets. The presence he sought was inside, but the dark fire consuming the energy around it obscured the being from view.

“Help me!” the voice called from within the dark fire. Peering deep into the elongated orb with his mental abilities, Strange touched upon the being within.

The being was a woman, frozen in place, the blaze of energy crackling around her. Were she to move in any direction, the dark fire would electrify her. Strange also sensed this was no ordinary fire. Its energy signature was familiar to him in a sickly intimate way.

_Dormammu !_

The hundreds if not thousands of times he died by the dark lord’s hand made Stephen keenly aware of what Dormammu’s power felt like to his very soul. Dormammu, who had become bored, had tried to walk away from Strange after a few hundred killings. His imagination only held so many ways to kill an insect. But the time loop began again, and both of them were right back where they started, facing off in an unending battle. By the end, the psychic onslaughts became…personal. Dormammu didn’t just kill him, tear his flesh and rip his bone, the dreaded one embedded tremendous hate and loathing into his attacks. He made Stephen know how wretched, deceitful and miniscule Stephen was to him. How _dare_ he, a mere human, subject a great and powerful energy being to such a demeaning existence!

The energy Dormammu encapsulated around this woman was very similar. There was a deep familiarity of its prisoner in its energy signature. But it was definitely directed at _her_ , not at Strange.

No, Stephen sensed, Dormammu wanted her to _suffer_. She had rattled him, humiliated him. She accused him of the truth. So in a fate worse than death, he captured her in this terrible energy cocoon, unable to move for as long as she lived. One false move inside, and the energy would send seething pain into her, preventing her from ever sleeping or letting down her guard.

It was cruelty beyond measure.

How long had she been here? And how had she withstood it? How had she managed to seek him out and send a message to him?

Too many questions, Stephen realized, but only one needed an answer now - how to free her from this cage and make their escape from this realm.

Stephen’s mind probed the energy tentacles as his astral form circled around it. The fire was a living thing. Its energy could be diverted if only momentarily, but as energy, it possessed the ability to injure or disable Stephen, too, even without his physical form.

Now Stephen wished he had been wearing his cloak before projecting himself in astral form. He could have wrapped it around him and marched right in. But there was no time for regrets or second-guessing.

A life was on the line, and every second counted. In his mind’s eye, he was suddenly back in the ER, his blood pumping while the casualties from 9/11 came pouring in. All of them suffering from smoke inhalation.

 _How does one fight fire?_ Remove its oxygen. Suffocate it.

Stephen knew the spell to use and lifted his hands, concentrating on calling the energy required to do as he requested.

Dark blue-green smoke erupted from his fingertips and pushed against the fire. The purple flames pushed back, the two forces struggling against one another. Within moments, a small gap appeared. Stephen continued the spell, and the green smoke billowed into it, carving a pathway for escape.

Moments later, the woman dove head-first out of the gaping wound, her head nearly jet black from the wild tangle of curls from her hair.

Once cleared, her face rose to meet his gaze, her eyes shown bright orange in a sea of grey. “We must hurry,” she said, her voice tinged with a slightly exotic accent. “He will know I have escaped!”

There was no need to ask who. Stephen let his spell go, and the smoke dissipated, causing the fire to shriek and squeal.

 _Built in alarm system_ , thought Stephen as he quickly followed the woman who, unlike himself, was in physical form, and moved through the space as if she were a mermaid swimming in an ocean.

Just as he wondered if she had an equivalent of a Sling Ring to escape this flip side of the Dark Dimension, a rumbling howl shook them, and the planets surrounding them in the white void swirled and seethed.

Dormammu.

His formless face filled the heavens, though he did not appear as a negative relief in this backwards color-scape. Instead, he was as black and slithery as ever, his energy rippling through his face while his eyes burned its purple fire. Flames adorned his head, climbing higher and farther in the void until the whole sky burned orange.

 _Oh shit_.

The woman recoiled, and Stephen stopped behind her. Although he was far more knowledgeable about esoteric powers now than when he first faced Dormammu, Strange was still no match for the dreaded energy creature. His shields could hold them off for a while, but the torrential onslaught he knew which Dormammu could unleash would still be no match. Eventually his shields would weaken, and they would die. And he had no Eye of Agamotto to save them now.

“ _YOU--!_ ” accused Dormammu, although Stephen wasn’t entirely sure which one of them he was addressing.

Before he could speak a retort, the woman had turned aside, her hands held before her formed into in a triangular shape. A glowing black mist sprang forth from the space formed by her hands, but barely wide enough for either one of them to go through. Stephen, however, sensed the spell she was trying to weave, and assisted her. The tear widened, and they stumbled through--

\--Only to find themselves whipped by a maelstrom of psychic winds!

The woman had opened a portal not back into the Dark Dimension, but into the slipstream of a dimensional rift! Stephen recognized this swirling tunnel of energy, the same place where the Ancient One shot his astral self off like a cannon when she ordered him to “open his eye.” The two tossed and tumbled into the ever-flowing energy like two barrels tossed down a waterfall.

Reaching out with his astral energy, Strange caught the woman, trying to stabilize them. He moved them into the flow of the energy currents and, once getting his bearings, followed the flow to the more familiar patterns he recognized. The current was still nearly as swift as thought, so when Stephen found the right location and opened a portal out of the rift, they fell out of it, slamming into the Earth dimension much as he first did when riding the dimensional rift by courtesy of the Ancient One.

His astral form slammed back into his body, making it skid backwards across the floor. The woman tumbled as if from nothingness to land where his body had once been. The candles which had been Stephen’s sentinels in his protective pentagram blew out, plumes of their smoke stabilizing the psychic energy of the room.

For a moment, all was silent.

**Author's Note:**

> Clea spent a number of stories trapped in an energy cocoon in the early comics before she joined him on Earth. Seemed fitting to bring that back, but with a more kickass storyline! (Remember, she led a rebellion in the Dark Dimension, too - might as well get right on that.)
> 
> And before you say, “Jet black hair--?!” Remember he’s in a Reverse Dimension inside the Dark Dimension where all color is in negative relief. Thus jet black = stark white. Cinematically, it looks funky and disorientating, but the reveal would be satisfying when the fans see her fall back into the Earth dimension.


End file.
